Editorial opinion
Sixties '
idealism
a cliche
Today if the sun shines thousands of
students will abandon their booKs to
bring blankets and brown-bagged
’bottles and bubble blowers to the HUB
lawn.
.Gentle Thursday, which began as a
Speech 200 project, has been a.tradition
since 1970. It’s typically a day when
anything goes people paint their
bodies and dress in freaky clothes and
peacefully pass out on the HUB lawn. Its
theme is always something like “a day of
sharing," or “a day of caring, sharing
and love,” or "a day in the sun" words
that often seem embarrassingly syrupy
and overdone to the cynics among us.
But cynicism will have no place on the
HUB lawn today. And that’s the beauty
of this gentle holiday it evokes a
nostalgia for the sixties, when young
people were still optimistic and the
words “peace” and “love” were not
cliches.
Today it is vogue to languish In the
no.stalgia of the forties and fifties, eras
Letters to the Editor
Inviting hate
TO THE EDITOR: This is in response to Mr. Harding’s letter
of April 22, 1976 regarding the truck driver-like behavior of
female Penn Staters. Well, Mr. Harding, I don't know where
you lived prior to State College or what part of town you
frequent,, but I beg to differ with your generalizations and
narrow-minded view. So, only truck drivers use those
distasteful four letter words? I’ve heard them from many a
mouth that didn’t sit behind the steering wheel of a Mack truck
(if you followed Watergate, you would have noticed they have
even reached Pennsylvania Avenue).
Your reference to'a “Levi’s-clad lady” also shows your
ignorance and is appalling. This is 1976 and I thought people
disregarded the notion that a female wearing blue jeans was
any less of a lady (Have you checked the price of a pair of Levi’s
lately? h
Concerning the female lack of cleanliness, I have lived in the
dormitories and I tend-to believe most girls strongly believe in
and practice personal hygiene.-
You state you feel there is enough hate and fighting going
on in the world. I feel you should swallow that bar of soap you
are offering to all the "ratty" girls at Penn State and quit in
viting it yourself with your attitude
No opinion, please
TO THE EDITOR: I am strongly opposed to the editorial you
printed on election day. I feel it is the duty of a newspaper, any
newspaper, to print the facts regarding each candidate as fairly
as possible. It should then be left to the voters to decide which
candidate will best represent their views. For the media to
endorse any candidate is to belittle the intelligence of the
electorate. In' the future, please print the facts, and leave the
choice to us
Only a filler
TO THE EDITOR: We would like to take this opportunity to
congratulate The Daily Collegian upon acquiring the title of
“best college newspaper in the Northeast in 1975.” However,
as Sheila McCauley wisely points out in her editorial dated
April 26, the Collegian sometimes deserves criticism.
Therefore, from our non-journalistic pens we wish to make a
suggestion.
Once again Penn State has been portrayed as a party school
far removed from students’ memories.
To most of us, the sixties were a time
when bearded outlaws carried protest
sighs and threw firebombs at college
administration buildings. It was a time
when scraggly “flower children" smoked,
pot and chanted Indian canticles in San
■ Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district.
It was also the time of Woodstock, the
big granddaddy of Gentle Thursday,
where 400,000 people between the age's
of 18 and 25 spent three non-violent days
listeing to big bands on Max Yasgur’s
dairy farm. ■
M**m Gamy
|pP Cipolla
Woodstock is far away now we can
pull out the album and reminisce about
how shocked we were,, in all our high
school innocence, to hear Country Joe's
“Fish Chee'r" for the first time. We can
reminisce about those big 10-page
spreads we saw in Life magazine of
students demonstrating for "social
causes” or against the Vietnam war.
Now their angry faces bjurjnto the
background, and we can see how wrong
they were to try to fight the system]
right?-Their “social consciousness” no
longer exists today. We have something
else now some call it "seriousness of
Pamela S. Lawson
Bth-accounting
John R. Kusiak
graduate-geophysics
at the expense of educational activities. We refer to the
Collegian’s coverage of Saturday’s 59th annual Little Inter
national Livestock Exposition. In comparison to your paper's
coverage of the Phi Psi 500, Little International rated slightly
more than a filler. We do not wish to take issue with the
participants of Phi Psi 500, for one could hardly dispute the
worth of such a charitable cause. However, as stated in the
article ’ printed in the Collegian, participants in the Little
International invested a great deal of time and effort in '
preparation of the Exposition. Perhaps their efforts should
have been "rewarded” by more comprehensive newspaper
coverage.
We feel that substituting a picture depicting the events at
the Exposition for one showing a young man sharing his “ill
fate” with a trash can may have given a better overall pohrayal
of the weekend's events. We would be interested in hearing
opinions from the rest of the University community on this
matter.
Do people think
TO THE EDITOR: In response to Mr. Saltsman’s query, “Do
women think?” I am compelled to counter “Do people think?”
We do. This includes male and female.
Mr. Saltsman is ignoring the fact that the complexity of the
human brain permits a diversity of thoughts and attitudes.
Some people are into soap operas. That’s their prerogative.
It's also everyone’s prerogative to take a break from the
concentration demanded by work, classes or studying. This
necessity is a psychological and biological fact. Even a theatre
major can’t always be into spontaneously sitting down to
watch Edward Albee on TV, especially at lunchtime, because
this is one time many people unwind.
Just because you, Mr. Saltsman, were into watching "Mid
day Live” on the tube one day does not mean that anyone who
wasn’t doesn’t think. The fact that you could be so obnoxious
as to turn away 13 people from a public TV room makes me
wonder how much you think.
-Collegian
sheila mccauley
Editor
Stash your trash
and let everyone
Gentle Thursday.
purpose" or “a new conservatism”;
others are more blunt and call it “looking
out for number one."
We found out that we can’t fight the
system, so take refuge in our books
so we can get top grades and get fan
tastic jobs so we can buy corvettes and
stereos and get a house down the shore.
We crack jokes about Nixon and
Watergate but few of us even bother to
vote. Our clothes reflect less self
expression and more narcissism we
want to make a good impression, of
course.
We complain that the demonstrations
of the sixties solved nothing, and that
the violence that often accompanied
them was senseless. But was it any
more senseless than the guerilla tactics
recently used by Bruce Springsteen
fans, who fought tooth and nail to be
first in line so they could buy four tickets
and scalp three?
In the late sixties, folk singer Arlo
Guthrie had glowing hopes for the
future: "All political systems are on the
way but. We’re finally gonna get to the
point where there’s no more bigotry or
greed or war. Peace is on the way ...
people are simply gonna learn that they
can get more by being groovy than by
being greedy.”
Some people would criticize poor Arlo
for living In a fool's paradise. Perhaps
some of us have learned that being
“groovy" inevitably leads to being
screwed. I, for one, lament the loss of
this optimism and idealism among
college students. And I also think we
should make an effort to remember these
feelings today, on this “day of sharing.”
Steven Jacobs
12th-general agriculture
Michael Hansen
graduate-health education
NADINE KINSEY
Business Manager
have a
Mob scene strikes hype
The Gentle Thursday Committee is
about to hold Its annual extravaganza.
That low moan you just heard can be
traced to the Hetzel Union Building and
its adjacent lawn.
Gentle Thursday, a day of hype billed
as a day of “music, balloons, flowers
and sharing." Thousands of the younger
brothers and sisters of the Woodstock
generation turning out to turn on to
peace and love. But mostly to litter.
Gentle Thursday, 1975, another ex
cuse to put the books aside to party, and
an obscene mob scene. A relentless
downpour forces peace, love, Wood
stock and its accompanying trash in
doors. Some say mother Nature did it on
purpose.
Peace. Hipsters jam wall-to-wall in the
HUB Ballroom. One particuarly loud and
hard-driving band spurs a fight in the
back of the roomithat quickly becomes a ;
Not generally speaking
Does anyone remember the 12-part
series “Rich Man, Poor Man,” which was
on television last winter? It was a soap
opera type dramatization of a novel by
Irwin Shaw, concerning two brothers
who could neither get along with or
witholit each other. One was “good" and
the other "bad,” to generalize a bit. Fang
wrote me about it and begged me to
watch it as a favor, and I complied
because he sounded so enthusiastic.
Monday nights I would tiptoe down the
stairs to the basement television, always
fearful that someone would have beaten
me out and captured a “Medical Center”
re-run. I shouldn't have worried. Every
Monday night, down in the. basement,
sat twelve guys, and me, entranced by
“Rich Man, Poor Man.”
The temptation here is to too hastily
conclude.,, all sorts of erroneous
assumptions about the male animal’s
viewing habits, thereby wounding a few
egos, missing the point, and demon
strating what is wrong with generalizing
without actually saying so. There isn’t.
enough, information about all of.those,
guys for me to say that men are just as
scatter-brained as women, just because
they were caught watching a soap opera.
I don’t know why they were watching
it did it mean something personal to
them, watching the conflicts of these
Susan Laird
4th-English
By KEITH BARNES
Collegian Staff Writer
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Love. A pile of garbage growing higher
as the day wears on. Someone starts a
rumor that the custodians will be more
than happy to clean up on Friday. After
all, that’s what they’re paid to do. A
stumbling bit of human refuse steps on
the same person three times in two
seconds. “Quaaludes, man,” he
apologizes. With a goofy grin and a
clever spilling of red wine on his victim's
bright white painter’s pants, he rolls off
to fall on someone else.
Woodstock. It rained there, too, at
which point everyone took their partying
home. 'Perhaps they even cleaned up
their .own mess. They may have gone
home just to relieve themselves.
Throughout most of Gentle Thursday,
HUB rest rooms'feature freshly peed
upon toilet paper.
Sharing. The Ballroom gets its fair
share of abuse. The pile of garbage
stops growing as darkness sets in. Why
two brothers? Was this a weird, class
assignment? Had they caught the first
chapter and become hooked by
suspense? Should I just think they
thought the lead actress was extremely
pretty, and let it go at that?
Martens
Television, as it has been said before,
is a strange addiction. It insults
everyone’s intelligence and then tricks
them by suspense into coming back
again and again. In high school I would
have killed for a single program of "Star
Trek” previously viewed at least six
times before.. I think most people have
experienced some sort of attraction fora
particular show some time in their lives,
whether 1 it be “Little Rascals," “Sixty
Minutes," or “As the World Turns." Is it
fair to be stereotyped for being a victim
of the latter?
Even here there is a risk of being too
could KeAuj/\
6ET Wo
With All those
UmVIUZED.WILD,
\HEfttHEN SHVK&ES.
trek to the, pile when a casual-drop at
one’s feet will do? It’s the natural way.
And smoke. They’re even burning
-incense. It’s 1975 and the leeches are
still burning incense. The HUB groans.
The stuff still stinks. At least it covers up
the snjell of everything else. Cigarettes
of all makes and kinds are being ground
into the once-proud wooden floor with a
vigor that would even take the shine off
the seat of a bus driver's pants.
Throughout it all, Gentle Thursday
people gleefully' distribute aspirin,
shampoo and squirt guns free of charge.
Irony would have it that a well-tossed
cannlster of Excedrin would slam Into
someone's head. Instead it - ' : merely
grazes a hand~and sends a half-empty
beer bottle shattering to the floor.
Peace? Love? Woodstock? Horse
frocky. A truly Gentle Thursday would
feature a snowstorm and locked HUB
doors. ~ . <
snide by calling viewers victims, just
because my personal scruples tell .me
one person’s entertainment is my own
waste of time. "Some of my best friends
have been Known to watch soap
operas?” No, that doesn’t work either.
The public I am speaking to does not
know my poor cliched “best friends."
Instead I pught to be asking anyone who
has been, wondering lately about female
intelligence how they are seeing us, as
individuals or as part of a'great mass of
“them?”
It is hard to destroy preconceived
ideas stuck in people's heads like so
many -marbles, but it is harder still to
quietly watch blatant and insulting
generalizations being thrown around
which have been based but on a single
facet of that person’s being. It jsn’t good
scientific method, and it isn’t even good
people-method. We all complain we are
never really understood or appreciated.
Our strange little defenses and fears
keep us from becoming close to one
another. Yet to resort to lumping -a
certain class or group together'as ratty,
flutter-buttery or dumb is just saying we
haven't got past our initial fears, and are
afraid to look underneath the surface
appearances for the truth. , - -
It’s more comfortable for me-to say
guys are silly,'too. But is it.honest?